Wednesday, July 20, 2016

another sad trombone for Christie

One day this past May, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reached out to a senior adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who left the presidential race just a few weeks before. As a candidate, Kasich declared in March that Trump was “really not prepared to be president of the United States,” and the following month he took the highly unusual step of coordinating with his rival Senator Ted Cruz in an effort to deny Trump the nomination. But according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?

When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.

Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?

“Making America great again” was the casual reply.

And for good reason! Even though Trump previously said that he would just let his Vice President run everything several months ago, it hasn't come up for a while. The fact that guy who is now the official Republican candidate for President has no intention of doing the job as president is really big news and is well worth repeating when further statements like these come out.

But the other thing that was interesting about that same NYT article, which is really about how Trump selected Mike Pence to be his VP, is how little Chris Christie is mentioned in the article. Christie's name appears once. He is among the names of the six people that the Trump campaign vetted. But then he disappears, giving the clear impression that Christie wasn't one of the finalists, or was even that serious of a contender. That will be news to Christie, who had a "tense conversation" with Trump last week, still trying to talk his way into the Vice Presidency even after the Pence choice had leaked.